A young Australian woman, once drawn to the allure of ISIS and who traveled to Syria with her best friend, expressed a chilling desire to die ‘for the sake of Allah.’ This revelation comes as all but one of the women involved are poised to return to Australia on Tuesday.
Hafsa Mohamed, a 20-year-old childcare worker from Lakemba in Sydney’s western suburbs, had taken to social media to extol the virtues of a martyr’s death. She and her close friend, Hodan Abby, were on a quest to find husbands committed to jihad.
Tragically, Mohamed lost her life in the war-torn region in 2015, leaving Abby in a precarious situation at the al-Roj refugee camp following the collapse of the Islamic State.
Now 26, Abby was just 18 when she ventured to Syria. She is among seven Australian women, often referred to as ISIS brides due to their connections with fighters, seeking repatriation along with their 14 children.
Nesrine Zahab, her aunt Aminah Zahab, and cousin Sumaya Zahab are also part of this group aiming to return to Australian soil. Others include Kirsty Rosse-Emile, Kawsar Kanj, and Hyam Raad.
The group made their way from the detention camp on Thursday, arriving in Damascus where they underwent interrogation. Following this, they were permitted to arrange flights back to Australia.
Most of the women will land in Sydney at 5.30pm on Tuesday, according to news reports.
One unnamed ISIS bride has been banned from returning to Australia on national security grounds under a government-issued temporary exclusion order, but her child has been allowed to return with the other women.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the federal government was not offering assistance to the cohort.
Pictured: Hafsa Mohamed, who travelled to Syria with her friend Hodan Abby to find IS husbands
Pictured: An Islamic State fighter on a street in the city of Mosul near the start of the war, in 2014
Hodan Abby
Ms Mohamed and Ms Abby were among the first Australians to independently travel to Syria when war broke out.
They lied to their parents about going on holidays in December 2014, before they boarded flights to Turkey and crossed the border into Syria.
Before they left, Ms Mohamed took to the internet to look for a husband who was heading to the Middle East, saying she longed to be a martyr ‘for the sake of Allah’.
‘How great to be martyred for the sake of Allah and going into a transaction with him by giving him your life and he will repay you with Jannah,’ she wrote.
‘If any mature guy wanting to go to Syria or Palestine would propose I would accept without a thought though he should be on his deen and must have a beard.
‘Pray that my dream of going to Syria is fulfilled. I want to bring it up with my mum but I’m afraid to do so … Australia is nice but I would rather be in Syria.’
She died in 2015, but Ms Abby survived and had a daughter the following year.
Pictured: Kashmiri demonstrators hold up a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq in 2014
Pictured: The squalid conditions at Roj Camp in Syria, where women and children live in tents
The girl sustained shrapnel wounds to the head, neck and back when she was a baby, delaying her growth and neurological development. She needs surgery, but was unable to get it at the camp.
Her father Abby Elmi Abane migrated to Australia with his family from Kenya in the late 1990s, and said children who remain in the camps are exposed to radicalisation.
‘The children, my granddaughter, have been living in these conditions for years. Help is overdue,’ he previously told media.
He claimed Ms Abby regrets travelling to Syria and has renounced her extremist beliefs.
She previously agreed to be monitored by the Australian government under a Terrorism Control Order if she was allowed to return.
Kirsty Rosse-Emile
Ms Rosse-Emile previously claimed she was tricked into entering the warzone n 2014 with her Islamic State fighter husband Nabil Kadmiry, who she married when she was 14.
When speaking with the ABC last year, she refused to explain how she ended up in Syria because it ‘could create problems for me’.
Kirsty Rosse-Emile, who married IS fighter Nabil Kadmiry when she was 14 years old
Pictured: Kirsty Rosse-Emile, crying while telling the ABC she was tricked into going to Syria
However, her former housemate Sara* – whose identity has been concealed – previously told the Daily Mail she knew exactly what she was doing when she flew to Syria to pledge allegiance to IS.
Ms Rosse-Emile, who was known by her Islamic name Asma, was 17 and staying in a self-contained unit attached to Sara’s place on the outskirts of Melbourne in 2010 when a mutual friend asked whether she wanted to go back to school.
‘Asma turned around and said “I don’t want to go to school, I want to go and make bombs”,’ Sara recalled.
In her message to the Albanese government last year, Ms Rosse-Emile said: ‘Hello, I’m here. Can you just come and get me, finally, and my children and all the other Australians here?
‘We’re ready to start our lives afresh.’
Supportive statements about IS can still be seen on Ms Rosse-Emile’s Facebook pages, uploaded before she left for Syria.
The posts read, ‘Jihad. The only solution’ and ‘Lions of Islam’, overlaid with images of terrorist figures.
Her father last year responded to Ms Rosse-Emile’s claims that she was tricked into entering Syria, telling The Nightly that his daughter was lying.
Kirsty Rosse-Emile is pictured, left, with other ISIS brides attempting to travel from Al Roj refugee camp, in Syria’s northeast, to the capital Damascus in February
Nabil Kadmiry is pictured protesting against an atheist convention, chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’. He was married to Kirsty Rosse-Emile
‘When she said, “Oh, I was tricked” and all that, it’s not true,’ he said.
‘In the way of Islam, when we go and fight for the cause of Allah, either you’re victorious or you are vanquished, but you don’t surrender, because it’s one of the greatest sins that somebody could [commit].
Nesrine Zahab
Nesrine Zahab entered Syria from Sydney in her early 20s, and previously told Four Corners she was holidaying with family in Lebanon when she unwittingly entered the war zone.
She then married Ahmed Merhi – a Sydney-born Islamic State terrorist who was sentenced to death in Iraq – because she claimed she thought it would give her the best chance of survival.
She told the program in 2019 that she went with a female cousin to help refugees on the Turkish side of the border and ‘freaked out’ when someone asked for her passport.
When she saw the Islamic State (IS) flag, she realised she was in Syria.
‘I found that I was in Syria. Did I have a heart attack? Of course I had a heart attack,’ she said in 2019.
Nesrine Zahab (pictured) says she didn’t know she was entering Syria in her early 20s. She later married suspected IS terrorist Ahmed Merhi
Nesrine Zahab’s husband Ahmed Merhi (pictured) was sentenced to death in Iraq over his involvement in IS
‘Did I cry and scream and chuck a fit like a little girl? I chucked the biggest tantrum.
‘Did it work? No. I’m still here.’
Aminah Zahab
Aminah Zahab is the mother of maths teacher-turned Islamic State recruiter Muhammad Zahab, who died in an air strike in 2018.
She told the ABC in 2019 that she and her husband Hicham were tricked by their son into going to Syria.
‘We’re clueless parents; we had a lot of trust in our children,’ she said.
‘As we raised our children, we just let the children rule our lives…I feel very angry.’
Sumaya Zahab
Pictured: Aminah Zahab, whose son convinced her and other family members to go to Syria
Sumaya Zahab is Aminah’s daughter, and the sister of Muhammad Zahab.
She travelled to Syria in 2014.
Kawsar Kanj and Hyam Raad
There is no public information about Ms Kanmj and Ms Raad.
It’s unclear if any of the women will face criminal charges upon landing in Australia.
It comes just weeks after four ISIS brides and their nine children returned to Australia on May 7 after spending seven years at the same camp in Syria.
Kawsar Abbas, 53, and her daughter Zeinab Ahmad, 31, were charged with enslavement and using a slave after landing in Melbourne.
Abbas was also charged with possessing a slave and engaging in slave trading.
Janai Safar is pictured after being arrested arrested at Sydney Airport on May 7
Zeinab Ahmad, 31, (pictured) was charged with slavery offences after returning to Australia on May 7
Her other daughter Zahra Ahmad, 33, is not accused of committing any crimes.
Janai Safar, 32, landed in Sydney and was charged with entering and remaining in a declared conflict zone and with joining the terrorist organisation.
